State's US Attorney's Office Collects More Than $100 Million

U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles announced that the District of South Carolina collected a whopping $102,759,361 dollars in fiscal year 2012 in criminal and civil actions. Of that amount, $6,654,883 was collected in criminal actions and $96,104,478 was collected in civil actions. 

Nettles said: “To put the dollar number in prospective it helps to know the total annual budget for this office is approximately $10 million. An investment in this office by the taxpayers of $10 million produced a return of in excess of $100 million. That is an excellent return on investment by any standard.”

“We have made recovering funds that are lost from fraud against the government, qui tam actions, a top priority in this district," Nettles added. "I doubled the number of attorneys working in our Affirmative Civil Enforcement Unit (“ACE Unit”) and have assigned additional support staff. This is the unit in our office that handles qui tam and false claims actions.  

The results we have obtained in the false claim, qui tam arena are a direct result of the district's resource allocation, Nettles said. Of the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices across the United States, the District of South Carolina’s collections were the 5th highest.

Nettles added: “We will continue to hold accountable those who seek to profit from their illegal activities at the expense of government contracts and programming. Recovering the money that was stolen plus substantial penalties is the most effective way to deter this fraud.”

This past March, the District of South Carolina settled with the nation's four largest mortgage servicers — Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Company, and Citigroup Inc. These banks participated in a nationwide practice of failing to obtain required mortgage assignments which resulted in servicing misconduct, and using false assignments to submit Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance claims, all in violation of the federal False Claims Act, Nettles said.

“The settlement this office obtained from the five major banks was historic in both its amount and its lasting effect on banking practices," Nettles said. "This is just one of many examples of how the District of South Carolina has utilized the False Claims Act and its qui tam provisions to modify the behavior of corporations.”

Nationwide, the U.S. Attorneys’ offices collected $13.1 billion in criminal and civil actions during FY 2012, more than doubling the $6.5 billion collected in FY 2011. A portion of this amount, $5.3 billion, was collected in shared cases in which one or more U.S. Attorneys’ offices or department litigating divisions were also involved.

South Carolina US Attorney’s office assisted in the collection of more than $4.4 billion in shared cases. The $13.1 billion represents more than six times the appropriated budget of the combined 94 offices for FY 2012.